PicoBlog

Born September 4th, 1866, in Kenbridge, Lunenburg County, Virginia, not long after the American Civil War, Alfred L. Cralle was a black American businessman and inventor. Alfred received patent #576,395 on February 2nd, 1897, for inventing his "Ice Cream Mold and Disher" an ice cream scoop with a built-in scraper for one-handed operation. Alfred's functional design is reflected in modern ice cream scoops. As a young man Alfred worked with his father in the carpentry industry which sparked his interest in mechanics.

Hello friends and enemies, We are verging on two thirds of the way through Martin Scorsese’s filmography. Now that we’re here, I sort of regret not saving all of my favorite films for the end. I specifically told myself I would reserve my top two for my last two, but otherwise, I wouldn’t follow any restrictions. But as we get toward the end, it’s a little bit like, I’ve already written about The Last Temptation of Christ and Casino, now I have to write about Gangs of New York and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore?

Alice has died, a little short of two months before her 93rd birthday. As her second oldest remaining friend and colleague — Audrey Thomas, author of the excellent Songs my Mother Taught Me among others, is the first, and Jane Urquhart, author of the magic Away, among others, is the third — I have been inundated with requests for “a few sentences,” “a comment,” and so forth. In other words, a sound bite.

In a podcast recorded last year, the prominent evangelical radio preacher Alistair Begg, after being asked by a grandmother whether she should attend her grandson’s marriage to a transgender person, advised her to go as an act of love and support. He said that if the gay or transgender couple knows of the grandmother’s commitment to Christ, and her disapproval of the marriage, she should feel free to attend the wedding as an act of love and support.

🐲 Happy Lunar New Year, everyone 🐲. I’m feeling physically much better these days — I also realized that while I objectively feel better in the second trimester than the first, the gap between how I expected to feel (basically normal with good energy) and how I actually feel (unpredictably up and down energy) is much much wider than in the first trimester (when I fully expected to feel horrible, and did).

I was a December college graduate which means every year around this time, I have memories of finishing up final requirements in order to walk at the graduation ceremony. One of my final projects was to videotape myself (yes, I said videotape it’s fine) signing along to Christmas songs. I think it may have been for extra credit. We did Rudolph and Here Comes Santa Claus. I specifically remember Silent Night.

When I was little, I read a book that said all mirrors are magic mirrors, and that if you place two mirrors facing each other you can create a portal. And being a curious and stupid child who was always looking for fairy rings to fall into or hag stones to look through I promptly created a lean-to out of my grandmother’s full-length mirrors and crawled inside to await whatever magic was coming.

Shakespeare's words from The Merchant of Venice have been bouncing around in my head for weeks. Perhaps it's that we've eaten the last bites of graduation party cake, boxed up all the chafing dishes, returned the tables and chairs to friends, and I'm marking the close of a season that holds both glitter and gold. Or maybe it's because I'm watching two mor… ncG1vNJzZmirkaeuqa3GnqmtsV6owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6ao6VlpJ2utXnGpaCtrJWnwG610malqKxdnLytsA%3D%3D

I met Danny when I was a twenty-two-year-old, mostly out-of-work actress who drove around LA in a Jeep Grand Cherokee that I steered mainly with my knees. Danny lived on Stanley near the first ever Erewhon, down the street from me and my next-door neighbor, Simon Helberg, this sweet little commercial actor who I used to always want to buy Starbucks for because I had a gut feeling he was going to end up an impoverished, high school theater teacher in the valley.